With gifts, guards, victual, all things fit; and hearten their supply With all like rights; and therefore now let all sides set down this, Or live, or perish; this of war the special secret is. In which most resolute design, whoever bears to town Patroclus, laid dead to his hand, by winning the renown Of Ajax’ slaughter, the half-spoil we wholly will impart To his free use, and to ourself the other half convert; And so the glory shall be shar’d, ourself will have no more Then he shall shine in.” This drew all to bring abroad their store Before the body. Ev’ry man had hope it would be his, And forc’d from Ajax. Silly fools, Ajax prevented this By raising rampires to his friend with half their carcasses. And yet his humour was to roar, and fear, and now no less To startle Sparta’s king, to whom he cried out: “O my friend! O Menelaus! Now no hope to get off; here’s the end Of all our labours. Not so much I fear to lose the corse (For that’s sure gone, the fowls of Troy and dogs will quickly force That piece-meal) as I fear my head, and thine, O Atreus’ son. Hector a cloud brings will hide all. Instant destructión, Grievous and heavy, comes. O call our peers to aid us; fly.” He hasted, and us’d all his voice, sent far and near his cry: “O princes, chief lights of the Greeks, and you that publicly Eat with our General and me, all men of charge, O know Jove gives both grace and dignity to any that will show Good minds for only good itself, though presently the eye Of him that rules discern him not. ’Tis hard for me t’espy, Through all this smoke of burning fight, each captain in his place, And call assistance to our need. Be then each other’s grace, And freely follow each his next. Disdain to let the joy Of great Æacides be forc’d to feed the beasts of Troy.” His voice was first heard and obey’d by swift Oïliades; Idomenëus and his mate, renown’d Meriones, Were seconds to Oïleus’ son; but, of the rest, whose mind Can lay upon his voice the names, that after these combin’d In setting up this fight on end? The Trojans first gave on. And as into the sea’s vast mouth, when mighty rivers run, Their billows and the sea resound, and all the utter shore Rebellows in her angry shocks the sea’s repulsive roar; With such sounds gave the Trojans charge, so was their charge repress’d. One mind fill’d all Greeks, good brass shields close couch’d to ev’ry breast, And on their bright helms Jove pour’d down a mighty deal of night, To hide Patroclus; whom alive, and when he was the knight Of that grandchild of Æacus, Saturnius did not hate, Nor dead would see him dealt to dogs, and so did instigate His fellows to his worthy guard. At first the Trojans drave The black-ey’d Grecians from the corse; but not a blow they gave That came at death. Awhile they hung about the body’s heels, The Greeks quite gone. But all that while, did Ajax whet the steels Of all his forces, that cut back way to the corse again. Brave Ajax (that for form and fact, pass’d all that did maintain